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UC Davis health system receives $500,000 for new surgery and emergency services project

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) —

UC Davis Health System is another step closer to its goal of raising $20 million for new surgery and emergency care facilities thanks to a generous grant from Koret Foundation Funds. The San Francisco-based philanthropy has awarded $500,000 to support the project, now under construction at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento.

Claire Pomeroy, vice chancellor for Human Health Sciences at UC Davis and dean of the School of Medicine, said the gift is crucial to funding the much-needed building, which is scheduled to open in 2009.

"As the region's population grows," said Pomeroy, "it's clear we also need to keep growing to meet the expected demand for medical services, especially in the areas of trauma and emergency care. Thanks to philanthropic help from foundations like Koret, we are in a great position to complete a state-of-the-art facility that will allow us to continue providing specialty care and treatment to the region's most critically ill and injured patients."

The $424-million Surgery and Emergency Services Pavilion addresses a number of challenges UC Davis faces as the only Level 1 Trauma Center for the rapidly growing Sacramento region. Given rising numbers of patients, new kinds of medical equipment and the state's building safety requirements, the medical center's current emergency department and operating rooms are both undersized and in need of prohibitively expensive seismic upgrades.

For the emergency department, the new facilities will be able to accommodate 70 patients at a time, up from 43. The busy department will be about 8,000 square feet larger than the current location, affording more patient privacy and a larger, more comfortable waiting area, where three dozen more chairs will be added to the 76 seats now available.

The surgery department is also expanding in size, adding eight more operating rooms to the existing 16 and nearly doubling its overall size to 50,000 square feet. The department, which already handles more than 10,000 surgeries a year, will add another 20 intensive care beds for its post-operative care, with half designated for trauma and vascular cases and the other 10 beds used to accommodate cardiac and transplant surgery patients.

Additionally, plans for the Surgery and Emergency Services Pavilion call for expanding the UC Davis Regional Burn Center, which is one of only two such units in Northern California certified by the American Burn Association. The new unit will double its current size to more than 12,000 square feet and add another four beds to an existing eight.

New locations are also slated for the departments of cardiovascular medicine, radiology and clinical laboratory services, which hospital chief executive officer Ann Madden Rice says will benefit both patients and staff alike.

"The new pavilion," said Rice, "is essential to our ability to provide the high quality service this community expects from us. It will bring critical hospital services into better proximity with each other, enabling our staff to serve patients more effectively and efficiently."

UC Davis officials say philanthropic support for new facilities is essential to keeping pace with the growing region's needs. The capital campaign currently has raised and has pledges for nearly $3.5 million.

UC Davis Health System is an academic medical center that includes a top-ranked school of medicine, a 577-bed acute care hospital, a National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center, the M.I.N.D. Institute for the study of neurodevelopmental disorders, a comprehensive children's hospital, a level 1 trauma center and outpatient clinics in communities throughout the Sacramento region. Consistently ranked among the nation's top medical schools and best hospitals, UC Davis has established itself as a national leader in telehealth, rural medicine, cancer, neurodevelopmental disorders, vascular medicine, trauma and emergency medicine, and psychiatry and behavioral sciences.

An entrepreneurial spirit guides Koret in addressing societal challenges and strengthening Bay Area life. Investing in strategic, local solutions, Koret helps to inspire a multiplier effect -- encouraging collaborative funding and developing model initiatives. In the San Francisco Bay Area, Koret adds to the region's vitality by promoting educational opportunity, contributing to a diverse cultural landscape, and bolstering organizations that are innovative in their approaches to meeting community needs. With roots in the Jewish community, Koret embraces the community of Israel, especially through Koret Israel Economic Development Funds (KIEDF), believing that economic stability and free market expansion offer the best hope for a prosperous future. At Koret, there is a commitment to making an impact -- to honoring the legacy of the founders, and to finding long-lasting solutions that improve people's lives.

UC Davis Health System is an integrated, academic health system encompassing UC Davis School of Medicine, the 577-bed acute-care hospital and clinical services of UC Davis Medical Center, and the 800-member physician group known as UC Davis Medical Group.